Today I’m gonna tell you about a very, very spooky recruiting story. (If you want to see me dressed up for halloween, just click on the video below. I obviously dressed up as a taco because #branding).

I had this client a long time ago when I first started coaching. And she was doing great, everything was awesome, and then about halfway into our time together, she gives me a referral for her friend who was just getting started with another network marketing company.

As I was talking to this referral I said to her, “I just have to ask you, why didn’t you join so and so’s team?”

And she said, “Well, it’s because she didn’t ask me, and this other person asked me first.”

I dug in a little bit more, and I said, “okay, well, tell me more.”

And she said, “Well, I did my appointment with [so and so], and everything was great. And I thought, ‘wow, I think I could do this.’”

Here is what actually happened. My client actually went out of town for a while after helping this customer. In the meantime, while my client was out of town, some other friend of hers said, “Hey do you want to join my network marketing team?”

And because of this positive experience with my client, she had such a positive concept of network marketing that she said, “Yeah sure, that sounds awesome.”

She is doing really well in her business, and so for my client, this friend is “the one that got away”.

I asked her, “well, what if my client would have asked you when you did your first appointment, what would you have said?” She said, “Yeah, I would have said yes.”

It’s so painful.

Every time I think about that story, it’s still painful for me because we had this person who was totally looking for side income, looking for a way to get out of her corporate job, really eager, had a positive view of network marketing, and ended up joining a different company and a different team, and that is just a major bummer.

What makes this a horror story here on Halloween, is that it’s happening more often than people realize. In the advanced recruiting course that I teach, I just had a client say that she knew of someone that she had never invited to her team, and this person ended up joining somebody else’s team and ended up at a top income level in her company.

Sometimes this happens because we have made assumptions or we have prejudged people. That’s the horror story, my friends.

So today let’s talk a little bit about avoiding this horror story and making sure that we are inviting people to join our team. I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts over the past month on this concept of recruiting. It’s on my mind because in the next few weeks, we are holding “The Good Human Recruiter Event”.

Let me give you a few thoughts on this concept of asking.

I recently read the book “Supercoach”, and there’s a chapter about how to ask anyone for anything. I thought it was just going to be the typical “Go out and do a bunch of stuff and get used to rejection,” but there were some really cool insights that I wanted to share with you.

The chapter starts off like this, “You can ask anyone for anything if you don’t buy into your thinking about what it means if they said ‘No.’” And then later on in the chapter Michael Neill says, “If you knew you would be safe, happy, and well no matter what, how would you ask?”

He breaks down the three reasons that people say no to one of your requests:

#1. Fear and insecurity that you’ll talk them into something that they don’t want to do.

#2. Lack of info or understanding about what you’re asking and how that is going to benefit them either directly or indirectly.

#3. A genuine knowing on their part that they don’t want to do the thing that you are requesting.

What’s really interesting about these three reasons people say no is that none of them actually have to do with you. They’re not personal, they’re not a dig at you. They’re not trying to hurt you, they’re not trying to reject you.

And there’s this part in here where it says,

Given how impersonal and even understandable it is that sometimes people don’t do what we ask them to do, why do we have so much thinking about the word no? Because when we make our request, we tend to put our self-image, self-esteem, and even physical survival on the line along with whatever it is we’re requesting. Instead of simply asking for the sale, the job, or the hand in marriage, our self-conscious subtext gets rolled into a question. And what we’re actually asking goes a little something like this, ‘Would you please do as I’m requesting and approve of me, affirm me as a human being, ensure I have whatever I need to survive, and let me know I’m worthy of your acceptance?’

I read that, and it just stopped in my tracks. I thought, “Oh my gosh, it’s totally what we’re thinking when we ask someone to do something!” For me, I get that feeling when asking people about enrolling in our coaching programs, or signing on as 1-on-1 clients. Maybe for you it’s asking someone about joining your team, or asking for the sale, or asking for referrals.

So instead of us saying, “I don’t wanna make any assumptions, would you like to learn how to earn money through X Company?” which is really all you’re asking, what we make this mean is, “I don’t wanna make any assumptions, would you please talk to me about joining my team? That way I know you approve of me, affirm me as a human being, ensure I have whatever I need to survive, and let me know I’m worthy of your acceptance?”

Here is an interesting question… suppose that you knew without a shadow of doubt that no matter what the person in front of you said, you would still have a thriving team? Why is it that recruiting gets easier for people once they already have a thriving team? Because they don’t add this context to it. And I think what we have to do is get out of our own head, and I know that’s easier said than done, but we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, “how can I ask this in a way, knowing that no matter what the answer is, I am still going to be successful. I know my income goals are going to be taken care of, I already know all of that, I also know that I need to invite people because that’s part of my job, but my actual well-being is not in question?”

I think that would change everything. And so here are the three tips that I want to give to you when you first enroll a customer on how to invite them to a recruiting conversation or business opportunity.

#1. Have fun inviting people

Invite people like it’s the best party in the entire world. When Charlie and I got married, our wedding, was freaking amazing and we knew it would be. And so, when we invited people, we said, “hey, you have to come to the wedding! It is going to be amazing! It is going to be super fun!” Now there are people that we invited that didn’t come to the wedding but we didn’t attach our self-worth to whether or not they came to the wedding because we knew no matter what, our wedding was going to be awesome. And when we invited people to our wedding with that confidence, they started to get excited too.

Now in the few coaching calls that I’ve done in the past few days, I’ve shared this with clients, that our belief, confidence, and enthusiasm are contagious. Also, our lack of belief, our lack of confidence, and our lack of enthusiasm are also contagious. And so, when we are inviting people to learn more about how to do this business, I think it’s really really important that you have fun inviting them.

#2. I just love this question…”I don’t wanna make any assumptions, would you like to learn how to earn money with the X Company?”

You may have heard me say this before in other trainings, but I think that it works really well especially when we’re having fun doing it.

#3. No matter what they say when you ask, you could just follow it up with, “Usually what I do is set up an appointment to go over why you would want to do this, how it would work, how to get paid, what you would do, and then you can decide if this is a good fit for you. Either way it’s okay with me, I just want to make sure that you’re making the most informed decision because that’s something that would be helpful.” And just see what they say.

Go back to the scenario of inviting people to the best party ever, how would you ask? Here’s how I would invite people to a wedding using Emerge language. “Okay, I don’t want to make any assumptions, but are you free or are you busy August 16th, 2008? Well, it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to have three different outfits. We are going to have an open bar. We will have the best Indian food in Southern California. We’re also going to have pasta and chicken and an awesome spread. We’re going to have a DJ. We’re going to have a photo booth. It’s going to be super fun. I really, really hope you can come.”

What if we invited with that type of attitude? And how would that change our, “I don’t want to make any assumptions, would you like to learn how to earn money,” and then we lay out the agenda. If you can’t come to my party, that’s totally cool, we can still be friends. Because there were people who couldn’t attend my wedding that I am still friends with. And I remember one of my friends that came to my wedding, she said her husband couldn’t come because he had to work. And I said, well, that’s a bummer. If anything changes, I really hope he’ll come too. And then we were at the wedding, guess who walks in? Her husband. And I was stoked. I was super excited that he was there.

I think if we start to look at our team as a party, we will have a lot more fun inviting people into our business. We will not need to live out this Halloween horror story when it comes to recruiting.

If you want to explore more about how to build your team, how to build your conviction, how to build your processes, how to make a plan to build your team, what are the things that separate the best team-builders from those who don’t do it all that well, then I want to encourage you to register for “The Good Human Recruiting” event. Go to emergesalestraining.com/events.

I hope to see you there. And I hope that you never live one of these spooky Halloween stories.